New Delhi, February 25 The Delhi High Court has restrained the unauthorized use and misrepresentation of Yoga guru Ramdev's name, image, voice, and other attributes of his personality in all formats and mediums, including content generated through artificial intelligence and deepfake videos.
Protecting Ramdev's personality rights in an interim order, Justice Jyoti Singh stated that the unauthorized deepfake videos and social media web pages depicting him endorsing products, cures, or medicines prima facie constituted misappropriation and exploitation of his goodwill, which also affected his public image and could damage his credibility.
The court, which was dealing with Ramdev's lawsuit on the issue, also directed the removal of certain offending content from the platforms within 72 hours of receiving the order.
"This Court prima facie finds that the impugned contents are not only violative of the plaintiff's rights to protect his image, voice, likeness, and other attributes of his persona and personality, but also go a step further wherein, by use of modern technology such as AI, the images of the plaintiff have been modified and/or associated with people and products he has no connection with," the court stated in the order passed on February 18.
"It is directed that until the next date of hearing, defendants No. 1 to 10 (including unknown persons) are restrained from publishing any material which violates the plaintiff's publicity/personality rights by utilising and/or in any manner, directly or indirectly, using or exploiting or misappropriating the plaintiff's (a) name 'Ramdev', 'Swami Ramde', 'Baba Ramdev', 'Yog Guru Ramdev', 'Yog Guru Swami Ramdev' and/or any abbreviation, moniker, title or variation thereof; (b) voice; (c) image; (d) likeness; (e) unique style of discourse and delivery; and/or (f) any other attributes which are exclusively identifiable/associated with him, for any commercial and/or personal gain, without the plaintiff's consent and/or authorisation in all formats and on all mediums, such as but not limited to generated content, deepfake videos, voice-cloned audio, metaverse environments," it ordered.
The court clarified that for content covered by the exception of parody, caricature, and lampooning, and which have not been directed to be taken down, the respective parties would address arguments on the next date of hearing on March 12.
In his lawsuit, Ramdev said he had been subjected to "an unprecedented and alarming onslaught" of AI-generated deepfake videos, manipulated photographs, impersonating social media accounts, distorted caricatures, and fabricated endorsements across multiple platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, X, as well as e-commerce websites.
He alleged that these activities were not accidental but were orchestrated to misuse and exploit his personality rights.